shot, Polja Dlugacz, the good-natured nurse, took her life. Particularly gruesome was a mass suicide by Bia- lystoker Jewish women, carried out in a railroad car heading for Treblinka after the ghetto was destroyed on August 16, 1943. As the train neared Treblinka, panic engulfed the women. Sobbing, they pleaded with several women doctors in the train to spare them the agonies of the gas chambers by ending their lives in the train. One of the doctors acceded to these desperate requests by slashing someone’s wrist arteries with a razor blade. Other women soon followed this example, slashing their own wrists. As it turned out, this train never arrived at Treb- linka but instead went to Majdanek, near Lublin. When the car doors were opened in Lublin, a sea of blood gushed forth. Even the Gestapo officers were taken aback. Some of the women were only barely alive. Berta Sokolska, a survivor, recounted this story to Dr. Tuwja Cytron at the Blyzin concentration camp, and he told it to me in April 1946 while he stayed in Bialystok. The Gestapo did not interfere as Jewish slave laborers administered first aid to these unfortunates. The Tragic End of the Jews in the Provinces Of all the difficulties for the Jews in Bialystok, per- haps the most debilitating was uncertainty over the future. What would tomorrow bring? Everyone sensed a horrible end for all was approaching quickly and inexorably. Yet few wished to give up hope. Instead, people clung to whatever glimmer of encouragement seemed to appear on the horizon. But each day brought news that sent waves of dis- heartenment throughout the ghetto. In the fall of 1942, rumors spread that the Nazis were preparing to annihi- late the Jews within the communities around Bialystok. The Bialystok district encompassed scores of towns and villages — including Bialystok, Bielsk, Grodno, Grajewo, Wolkowisk, Wisoki-Mozowieck, Augustow, Lomza, Sokolka and Pruzane — which contained about 200,000 Jews. Word also spread that after the Nazis got through with Jews in the provinces, the ghetto in Bia- lystok would be next. These unwelcome prospects generated panic as well as a sense of urgency among Jewish inmates in the ghetto. They began feverishly building hiding places so it would be difficult for the Nazis to find them in case the ghetto was attacked. Not everyone, however, had the wherewithal to construct these shelters. Those who did not sought advice from the members of the Juden- rat, who were unable to offer any useful suggestions. The Horror of Treblinka Mordechaj Tenenbaum-Tamarof established close contact with members of the Judenrat, particularly with its Chairman, Efrajim Barasz. At the end of 1942, when 82 the Jews in the provinces were evacuated, Barasz turned over to Tamarof certain photographs and documents, some of which contained horrifying information. These papers were found in the clothes of provincial Jews sent away. The jackets, after proper disinfection, were returned to Bialystok so the textile factories could recy- cle them. While sorting these garments, the workers found papers written by their former owners. The name ‘“Treblinka” often appeared. And so the ghastly truth the Nazis had been concealing — what ‘“‘deportation”’ really meant — was uncovered. When Tamarof obtained these materials from Barasz, he was stunned. The secret finally was revealed that the Jews of the provinces had in fact been evacuated to Treblinka, where they would surely be exterminated in its gas chambers and crematoria. The inmates of the Bialystok ghetto realized their own end could not be far off. Tamarof wrote in his diary about the heroism and cour- age, the stoicism and pride shown by the provincial Jews as they were sent to their deaths. Their bravery will shine in the annals of Jewish history. * * * Mordechaj Tenenbaum-Tamarof won an impor- tant concession from Chairman Barasz at the end of 1942 — the right to copy the Judenrat archives for the benefit of the resistance leadership within the ghetto. The archives contained minutes of the Judenrat meet- ings and announcements by the council to the Jews in the ghetto. After the war these records were found and printed in numerous publications. Yad Vashem in Jeru- salem, the Holocaust documentation center, also pub- lished a large portion of the Bialystok ghetto archives. The Bialystoker Memorial Book |